(SpoCOOL) A Spokane Blog

Interested in seeing another new brewery here in Spokane? Of course you are, and what better way to prove your enthusiasm than to support Black Label Brewing Company's Kickstarter.

They have raised almost $6,000 of a $15,000 goal that, with thirty-seven days to go, seems achievable. Black Label describes themselves as "Spokane's first green nano-brewery", and with ideas like a bicycle powered grain mill, they certainly have some original plans.

More information can be found on their Kickstarter page, as well as on their Facebook profile.

Looking to do some good this weekend and drink some excellent coffee? Coeur Coffee will be hosting a West Central clean-up this Sunday at 9 am. Good deeds aside, they will also serve coffee from Manners -- Mr Spokane's roaster -- for free. Awesome, right? Right! Check out Coeur's Facebook post for... Well, not a whole lot more, but for the official word at least. We fully expect to see Riverkeeper Bart Mihailovich there!

Hometown Heroes. Every city has them, be it the affable weather man (George Maupin, obviously) or somebody who saved the proverbial cat.

And we, too, want to celebrate these heroes, these princes and princesses of Spokane. Therefore we introduce our new segment, Hometown Heroes, where we will do just that, celebrate them. Granted, you don't really have to be a hero to be featured here. Nor does Spokane need to be your hometown. But you get the picture.

The idea came after a Barista Parlor -- an (apparently) awesome Nashville coffee shop which one half of Team SpoCOOL has visited, leaving the other half appropriately bitter, but I digress -- barista was featured on imogene + willie's blog-segment, "The Roundup". Here Hometown Heroes share their twenty must-haves, helping you to know them just a little bit better.

So we decided to do something similar. And without further ado, we present to you our first Hometown Hero...

... the Keaton Violet!

You know Keaton from Coeur, where he pulls espresso shots with love and care. He prances around in worker's boots, sporting a beard any man would envy, and he has even inspired a parody Twitter account, @keatonviolent. What drives him to be the man known and loved (in a platonic way) by Spokane? Here is Keaton's top five:

1. Tacos: Tacos are either really good or really bad. There's no in between. Tacos El Sol (yellow truck) downtown across from the A Club is a great place to start. Cheap and delicious. What could be better? 

2. Vinyl: If you buy vinyl, one of the best places for this addicting habit is the Bachelor Pad on Monroe St. They also have an awesome lineup of vintage stereo equipment and vintage clothing as well. If you don't know what records to buy, ask the guys there about their world/jazz selection, and be prepared to have your mind blown. 

3. Cocktails: One of my favorite places in town right now is Casper Fry. They have an incredible whiskey selection (maybe the best in town?), and their bartenders are eager to make awesome drinks. This is a good combination for drinking well. It doesn't hurt that their food is great.

4. Kitchen Supplies: I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to kitchen gadgets. That's why the Kitchen Engine (located in the Flour Mill) is one of my favorite stores in Spokane. They're picky about what they carry, so you know it's good. They have a great selection of cooking gear, coffee brewing equipment, and a really nice selection of tasty salts. 

5. Local Music: If you're looking for a great local music act, make sure you don't miss the next time Marshall Mclean plays. His next show is on March 2nd at Jones Radiator at 9 p.m. Tickets are five dollars, which is a small price to pay to see the best songwriter in the NW perform amazing songs. You can learn more at www.marshallmclean.com.

And there you have it! That is what makes Keaton tick. You can follow the man -- the real one -- on Twitter at @keatonviolet, or just go enjoy one of his delicious coffee drinks at Coeur. We highly recommend the latter.

Who do you want to see featured as a Hometown Hero? Email us, team@spocool.com, or tweet us, @spocool, to nominate someone. We are all ears.

There is a movie called Butter currently streaming on Netflix. It's not a great movie, but it is amusing, largely due to the playground it provides for an all-star cast. I mean, it's about as funny as a movie about butter sculpting could be.

Butter, then, is great background noise while you're brewing Bulletproof coffee, seeing how you will want something thematical to take your mind of what you're doing: mixing coffee with butter.

We've mentioned this particular and peculiar type of coffee before, and were curious to try the self-proclaimed "cognitive enhancing recipe" ourselves. Butter in coffee. Butter. In. Coffee. The concept is mind-blowing.

So, grabbing the recipe from the official site (find measurements there) we brewed and mixed the Bulletproof as closely as we could:

• The mold-free coffee: There are many opinions out there about the whole mold-free thing, and we suspect the Bulletproof Executive biggest concern is to sell its own coffee. Fair enough, but we wager DOMA's Chemistry of Love, which we French pressed, is mold-free enough.
• Unsalted, grass-fed butter: Not a big deal.
• MCT oil: This was, until Marco's post, optional. We don't know what changed over the last week, so we left it out. $29 for a bottle? We don't need to be that energized.

We blended the coffee and butter using a Vitamix until the head was foamy, and enjoy a couple of cups of buttered coffee.

The site lists the mixture's many health benefits, none of which we will comment on seeing we're not nutritionists.

What we can say is that it's pretty filling, and it does give you some energy. The six hour claim seems a bit excessive though; somewhere around 2-3 hours is more realistic, though the MCT might have made a difference there. I also experienced a bit of a headache, probably because I'm not used to this much butter.

Most importantly, does it taste good?

It was actually better than we expected. When mixed properly -- the step Marco truly messed up -- it just tastes like a thick latte, with a hint of butter at the end. In that sense, this might be for you if you like lattes where you really can't taste the coffee. And, of course, if you have the calories to spare, and subscribe to high-fat diets.

I'm not sure we'll try it again. We like the flavor of coffee, and you don't get much of that here. The Bulletproof method is, if nothing else, interesting. We recommend trying it if you're feeling a bit adventurous, or just have a hankering for butter.

In our previous episode of Ninkasi, I declared them dead to me. That might have been a bit harsh, seeing they do release some good special beers now and again. A more appropriate declaration would have been saying Ninkasi's seasonals are dead to me.

Yet here I am, trying their ReNEWale yet again. And they have truly renewed this ale. No longer is it a porter, but rather an ESB. That's a big change, yet it all goes sideways. Flavor wise it is completely different than last year's ReNEWale, that goes without saying, but quality wise...

Oh, it all starts off just fine, pouring a nicely dark amber color. The head looks creamy, though there's only about half a finger of it.

The nose, too, isn't shabby. Caramel and hops dominate, with a bit of malt toward the end. It's pretty predictable, which isn't -- or shouldn't be -- a bad thing.

Take a sip while it's too cold, and it doesn't come off as that bad either. Uninteresting, sure, but not bad. Let it warm up to an appropriate temperature, however, and it all falls apart. Which is strange; you'd think it would get better as it warms up a bit, but the ReNEWale follows in the proud footsteps of Budweiser and Coors Light. It works better at a cold temperature. I mean, what the hell?

There's just not much going on here. The mouthfeel is thin to the point of feeling watered down, and the bitterness isn't there. You can pick up on just a bit of caramel, but not to the point you'll want to do a happy dance or anything. It's a dull beer, almost offensively so.

So, obviously I don't like it. You might pick up something I didn't, who knows? Try it, but don't say I didn't warn you.